So with support from the Highland Park Bike-Walk Advisory Group, we spearheaded an effort to improve biking in the Highlands, a neighborhood where people need better biking options between schools, parks, trails and businesses.

Last spring, city staff, members of the Bike-Walk Advisory Group and Active Trans toured the Highlands to assess existing conditions.

We discovered a trail that few people knew about and found an abundance of calm, quiet streets ideal for family biking.

The next step was a planning process, which called community input. So a meeting was held during the summer to collect feedback from residents to identify what bike-related improvements they would like to see.

Active Trans then developed a Highlands Family Friendly Bikeways Plan, which includes recommendations for developing bike routes on low-stress streets, creating new local and regional trail connections, pursuing traffic calming measures and increasing kids walking and biking at schools.

These goals inlcude improvements to its street and transportation system that will serve all sorts of people: people who walk, bike, and use transit; people with disabilities; and users of motor vehicles.

And Highland Park’s passion for making its city more bike friendly hasn’t gone unnoticed.

In 2014, the city was granted an Honorable Mention as a Bike Friendly Community by League of American Bicyclists.

We're grateful to the city and its Bike-Walk Advisory Group for being great partners.